Caribbean Amerindian Centrelink
(CAC)
Museums
The sites listed below are for Museums
that have materials relating to Amerindian populations of the Caribbean,
or which have had special exhibitions or public programs of relevance,
and that have some information online. The list is not complete, and additions
will be made with the passage of time. The addresses of pages internal
to these sites sometimes change, so please investigate each one carefully
to locate their Caribbean materials.
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Altos
de Chavon–The Regional Museum of Archaeology (Dominican Republic): “the
Altos de Chavon Cultural Center Foundation is a non-profit educational
and cultural institution located in La Romana, Dominican Republic….The
Regional Museum of Archaeology documents the island's rich pre-Columbian
heritage and serves as a valuable information resource for students and
visitors. Ritual and utilitarian objects, arranged by chronology and style,
trace the evolution of indigenous cultures from the preceramic era to the
time of the Taino Indians, the island's predominant civilization during
the arrival of the Spanish conquerors….This extraordinary collection of
more than 6,000 artifacts was discovered in the region where the Museum
is now located, on the banks of the Chavon River”.
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Historical Archaeology
at the Florida Museum of Natural History—The Florida museum’s archaeology
program has had ongoing projects focused on St. Augustine, Florida, since
1973, and in Hispaniola since 1979. The research sites and the collections
that have been accumulated have served to provide a continuum of Spanish
historical settlement in the Circum Caribbean region from 1492 until 1821.
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Saint Maarten
Museum: “Artifacts of Arawaks: displaying archaeological finds
dating from 500 - 600 A.D. Among these objects you find tools, zemis, pottery
fragments and shells. The Arawaks were Amerindians who originated from
the Orinoco basin in Venezuela, and who roamed through the islands in their
canoes called ‘pirogues’. See an example at the entrance of the museum….”
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The
Walter Museum of Anthropology, Georgetown, Guyana: “The
Walter Roth Museum of Anthropology, the first museum of anthropology in
the English-speaking Caribbean was founded in the year 1974 with the collections
of Guyanese Archaeologist Dr. Denis Williams. In 1980 the ethnographic
collections of Dr. Walter Roth, Mr. J.J. Quelch and Sir Everard im Thurn
were transferred to the Walter Roth Museum from the Guyana Museum. The
Museum was opened to the public in 1982. An ethnographic collection of
the Waiwai was presented to this Museum in 1991 by Guyanese Cultural Anthropologist
Dr. George P. Mentore. The Museum's collections also include excavated
artifacts from all of the ten Administrative Regions of Guyana”.
This page was last updated: Tuesday, 30 December, 2003.
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